Posted
by
samzenpuson Sunday July 20, 2014 @09:39AM
from the all-in-one dept.

An anonymous reader writes VolksPC who developed MicroXwin as a lightweight X Window Server has come up with their own Linux distribution. Setting apart VolksPC's distribution from others is that it's based on both Debian and Android and has the capability to run Debian/Ubuntu/Android apps together in a native ARM experience. The implementation doesn't depend on VNC or other similar solutions of the past that have tried to join desktop apps with mobile Android apps. This distribution is also reportedly compatible with all Android applications. The distribution is expected to begin shipping on an ARM mini-PC stick.

Apparently there are no stable releases of Android for the Raspberry PI. I would prefer to have the whole Android distro on my phone, but I guess this is the nexr best thing. Looking forward to testinging it.

I wonder how much of that has to do with the tendency among Android app publishers to make their products exclusive to Google Play Store, which is (legally) available only on devices with preloaded Android OS. This makes AOSP distributions undesirable to end users.

As an android developer I do the same. Google Play is very convenient for developers. Most of my apps seem to magically appear on other marketplaces anyway after they go on Play. I've heard it was because some of the broadcom components of the PI are closed source.

I wonder how much of that has to do with the tendency among Android app publishers to make their products exclusive to Google Play Store, which is (legally) available only on devices with preloaded Android OS. This makes AOSP distributions undesirable to end users.

On the other hand any kind of "app store" in an "enterprise environment" where installing any kind of software is about the last thing "end users" should be doing.

Unfortunately that cat has long escaped the bag. As a security professional I think that BYOD and the like is a horrible idea, but most organizations have shortsightedly embraced it because a) it's cheaper (no need to pay for mobile devices) and b) they got sick of the bitching and moaning. So now we have a bunch of people running around on the enterprise network with their own devices that they have full control of.

The idea that you didn't have already is complete fantasy. In most enterprises you can just go to a random meeting room and plug in. In others, more advanced techniques would be needed but hardly something you could call "hacking". If you can't deal with BYOD then you aren't ready to deal with reality.

Broadcom have open-sourced the chip used on the Pi now (as I recall, this is including the source for the Videocore GPU); I think that was always the RPi Foundation's intention, but it's only recently made it through the legal processes.

Folk are working on Android for the Pi - it is coming. Personally, I hope this distro gets ported to the Pi, because having a full Debian instance, with the ability to run Android apps within a window (much like Wine does for Windows applications within Linux), gives users

Nokia N900 owners can tell you of installing EasyDebian on their phones to run e.g. desktop Firefox and LibreOffice. As Sailfish inherits much of the same functionality, and it can run Android apps, I imagine that we might see EasyDebian on Jolla phones eventually. Apparently the only obstacle is that EasyDebian requires X11, but Sailfish doesn't have it, but this may be resolved with increasing uptake of Wayland within the Debian project.

You have a point. Of course, there are differences. This gives you desktop apps on ARM, unlike Windows RT. And the mobile apps you get are Android ones - i.e., there are mobile apps. The joining of the two is just as awkward (perhaps even more so) than in windows 8. But at least you're getting the apps you want - and oh, by the way, it's all free. It would be nicer if they somehow managed to run Android apps windowed on the Debian side - kind of like Windows 9 is promising to do...

It's not just Microsoft there's also Ubuntu's Unity and the pretty much universally unused Launchpad in OSX then you have this VolksPC implementation which if anything is even more jarring than Windows 8. There's been hardware to do it with for years now, even Microsoft's own Surface Pro line can run Linux and Android. I'm not saying it's impossible just because nobody has done it, but there's been ample time and still nobody has got it even close yet.

It's more like "If Micrososft can't do it then EVERYONE ELSE can, will, and have done it for 10 years prior".

When I go to the main volkspc.org url, it's titled 'Just another WordPress site". When I look at all the links on the page, it's essentially several categories of vapor. Some photoshopped images of 'hardware' and even a 'software' page with a single YouTube video to watch, and no links whatsoever to any software. The only link on the FAQ page is titled 'unified distribution' but just loops back to the 'sofware' page with it's YouTube video.